August 2020
Adam Staley Groves: Pondering My 2020 Vote
I actively supported Obama in 2008. I voted for him and I still feel it was the right thing to do. But I did not vote for Obama in 2012, or for Clinton in 2016. Why did I not vote?
Read MoreAsked for French Toast
My father, Seymour Robbins, “Sim,” grew up in his parents’ Jewish deli in Stamford, Connecticut. They cooked all their own meats; corned beef, pastrami, and tongue, and all the side dishes; kugels, knishes, and salads...
Read MoreSoaring Above the Skylark
At the summit stood a stone Shinto gate framed by chestnut trees. I climbed the worn stone steps to find an overgrown shrine filled with moss-coated sculptures—images of Buddhist deities and elderly sages in flowing robes...
Read MoreSerious Kailyarding
During its wildly popular late-nineteenth-century pomp, Kailyard literature (so-named for a cabbage patch) was characterized by sentimental depictions of rural Scottish folk in all their close-knit charm...
Read MoreThe beds turned dark brown, springy; they lifted from the earth…
My shovel hit the earth with a ka-chunk. My friend and I were digging trenches to lay down a line of asparagus. We didn’t get far...
Read MoreWhen was salt and snow first used to produce ice cream?
The earliest form of ice cream seems to have been produced a little before Della Porta started freezing wine...
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Both Derrida and Ronell suggest that saying yes is “telephonic,” both in the sense that it resounds over a distance and therefore always is affected by distortion and delay, and that the telephone as technological apparatus not so much adds to these inherent obstructions as it stands model for them.
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I don’t even care about secrecy, usually, because the scenario of exposing what’s unjustly censored has always seemed overdramatic to me, a distraction: all communication amounts to a defense.
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Today I ran without music. When I run this way my head boils out, matter shooting everywhere like water on hot oil. Phrases reach me and mostly move away before I can trap and extend them into actual thoughts.
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Today I introduced Facebook to someone older than me and had a long conversation about what the point of networking amongst “friends” is. The person was so skeptical because to her stranger and distance-shaped intimacies are diminished forms of real intimacy.
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Most of the writing we do is actually a performance of stuckness. It is a record of where we got stuck on a question for long enough to do some research and write out the whole knot until the original passion and curiosity that made us want to try to say something about something got so detailed.
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Both Derrida and Ronell suggest that saying yes is “telephonic,” both in the sense that it resounds over a distance and therefore always is affected by distortion and delay, and that the telephone as technological apparatus not so much adds to these inherent obstructions as it stands model for them.
Read More
I don’t even care about secrecy, usually, because the scenario of exposing what’s unjustly censored has always seemed overdramatic to me, a distraction: all communication amounts to a defense.
Read More
Today I ran without music. When I run this way my head boils out, matter shooting everywhere like water on hot oil. Phrases reach me and mostly move away before I can trap and extend them into actual thoughts.
Read More
Today I introduced Facebook to someone older than me and had a long conversation about what the point of networking amongst “friends” is. The person was so skeptical because to her stranger and distance-shaped intimacies are diminished forms of real intimacy.
Read More
Most of the writing we do is actually a performance of stuckness. It is a record of where we got stuck on a question for long enough to do some research and write out the whole knot until the original passion and curiosity that made us want to try to say something about something got so detailed.
Read More